An attempt to politicize the winter Olympics over climate change fails to demonstrate climate consensus

Olympic athletes just won’t know what snow is (with apologies to Dr. David Viner)

With the winter Olympics taking center stage of world media right now it of course becomes a potential on-camera political opportunity for anybody with an idea and a sandwich board. So, predictably, somebody tried to make the winter Olympics all about “climate change”….and failed. Nutty Bill McKibben gave his endorsement:

Today, US Ski Team member, 2014 Olympian Andrew Newell, 105 Olympians and Protect Our Winters released a statement calling on world leaders to take action on climate change and to prepare a commitment to a global agreement prior to the Paris climate talks in 2015.The letter has been signed by 105 Olympians from countries that include: The United States, Switzerland, Norway, Estonia, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Italy and Sweden. In addition to Newell, some of the 105 athletes include: US snowboarders Danny Davis and Arielle Gold, Switzerland’s Bettina Gruber, Norway’s Astrid Jacobsen and Italian ski jumper Elena Runggaldier.“Recognize climate change by reducing emissions, embracing clean energy and preparing a commitment to a global agreement at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris 2015.”

Among other things, it seems they are whining about the lack of snow at Sochi, a place where palm trees grow and climatically not that great of a place for a winter Olympics, but has been “geoengineered” as this news story tells us:

The Russian resort, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, is humid and subtropical. Temperatures average out at about 52 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, and 75 degrees in the summer. Palm trees line the streets, and it’s the only part of Russia warm enough to grow tea leaves. In other words, it’s a lovely spot if you’re planning a beach holiday — Stalin had his favorite summer house there — but it wouldn’t be most people’s first choice for a ski trip.

…

So it shouldn’t come as much surprise that transforming Rosa Khutor into an Olympic venue has been a rapid, expensive process. It’s estimated that the cost of staging the Olympics in Sochi has been greater than the previous three Winter Games combined — ballooning to a whopping $51 billion. A sizable chunk of that money has gone to dealing with the “whims of the weather,” as a spokesperson for Sochi 2014 put it in an email to The Verge.

…

“There is almost no snow here — at the moment it’s raining,” says Olga Mironova, a local resident. That’s exactly the problem that derailed the last Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010 — buckets of snow had to be airlifted to top up the slushy covering on the hay bales that were being used to create artificial mounds in the tracks. Those emergency measures proved successful, but organizers admitted afterwards that they’d seriously underestimated the impact of climate change.

Apparently ‘climate change’ jumped in and made them choose a ridiculous venue at Sochi. Oy vey!

After McKibben made his tweet of support, a count of the list presented at http://protectourwinters.org was made, and summed up in this riposte:

105/2500 *100 = 4.2%

I can’t imagine why any athlete would want to be concerned with a political agenda that might deflect their concentration from the greatest moment of their lives. I’m surprised that even 4.2% of the winter Olympic athletes bothered.

Meanwhile, back in la-la land, we have this plea from Olympian organizer Andrew Newell

This year, while preparing for my third Olympic games in Sochi I had to ask myself: what’s changed? What has changed since that day in 1985 when I first experienced that thrill and came to love this sport? Thankfully, much is the same except there is no escaping that the once-consistent winters that I saw as a young kid are no more, especially near my home in Vermont.

Of course most of us know that athletes generally aren’t very smart when it comes to things outside their narrow field of expertise and training, but you’d think this “climatic community organizer” who says we have to “protect our winters” would at lease be able to do these two things:

1. Check the expected climatic conditions of Sochi

From Capital Weather Gang: The Games are being held during a stretch of the coastal city’s coldest winter stretch, with a daily average high of 49 degrees and low of 36 degrees Fahrenheit. Remarkably, Sochi’s daily average temperature values never drop below freezing at any time of the year. According to NASA, it’s the warmest host city for any winter Olympic games.

The daily average low (blue) and high (red) temperature with percentile bands (inner band from 25th to 75th percentile, outer band from 10th to 90th percentile. (WeatherSpark)

2. Check the weather report back home and snow depth in his home town of Bennington, Vermont:

This is perfect – here McKibben is worrying about “climate change” at Sochi, while everyone who’s there realizes that what they REALLY have to worry about is having drinkable water and working toilets.

Andrew Newell bemoans his opinion that winters have got warmer and need to be protected, but at the same time condones holding this years Winter Olympics in a sub- tropical destination, requiring import or manufacture of snow and ice. The CO2 production of creating and maintaining this artificial environment must be huge.

This iyet more proof, if any were needed that AGW and hypocrisy go hand in hand.

Its darn cold here in Hong Kong – down to 4 to 5 centigrade last night – hold the next winter olympics here!http://www.hko.gov.hk/wxinfo/ts/index.htm
Maybe the Russians know there is a global cooling period on its way ;-)

Not that anyone ought to give a fig, but right here in the comments of WUWT last month, I posted the idea that if cold air blobs spin OUT of the North Pole to the West, then warmer air must get sucked INTO the North Pole from the East to replace it. Duh.

“Today is Monday, February 10th and this is the updated trail report for the Brighton Snowmobile Club.

Trails in and around the downtown area are being reported as good; the mountain riding is being reported as very good to excellent! This is the best riding we’ve had in the last 3 years so come up and enjoy it with us.”

Looks like we’ll have to host the next Winter Olympics in Miami, Florida, to “prove” that a warming climate is driving these events to extinction!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
YES! Even Fayettville NC is too cold compared to Sochi.
Min Temperature – 28 °F(today) Avg low = 35 °F Record low – 10 °F (1973) for February 12.

Meanwhile I got on the NASA GISS site the other day to see if they had updated their local station data for January 2014. I first downloaded their data in February 2009. Well the local station data for January 2014 is not up yet but what I found was much more disturbing. I only downloaded data for the Toledo Express Airport in 2009 and now that data is completely different in 2014. Sometime in the past 5 years they have completely fudged the numbers. Early 1880’s data was downgraded by .5 degrees, Early 1900’s data was downgraded by .2 degrees. By 1980 the data was raised by .4 degrees. So the disparity from 1880 to 1980 since 2009 had grown by .9 degrees at the Toledo Airport. WOW, Amazing. And here I thought Data was set in stone. Not at NASA where they artificially just created a .9 degree rise in temperature for the years 1880 to 1980 at the Toledo Airport. Not the slope was negative for those years in 2009. Now in 2014 the slope is level. Amazing stuff.

If one recalls a quote from Esper
“the ability to pick and choose which samples to use is an advantage unique to dendroclimatology”
Then we can throw out 2392 of the Olympians as being unsuitable, leaving 108
Therefore 105/108 = 97% consensus! Simple!

Actually, a state south of the Mason Dixon line would have done well this year…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Yes! Here is the North Carolina Ski Report

North Carolina Ski and Snow Reports

Currently 5 ski areas (83%) out of 6 ski resorts reporting are open for skiing and snowboarding. State wide 72% of lifts are open. 88% of trails in North Carolina are open. Appalachian Ski Mtn has the most number of trails open at 100%. Cataloochee Ski Area has 100% of trails open, and Sugar Mountain Ski Resort has 95% open.

Right now (8:30 AM), the temperature in Bennington, Vermont is -9 F. East coast winter storm hits tomorrow…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It already hit here in Mid NC. @ noon yesterday. We have snow on the ground and 28 °F, Snow, ice pellets and freezing rain forecast for the next few days. YUCK!, I would prefer straight snow.

I WANT my GOREBULL WARMING NOW! (Said in the whiny voice of a four year old)

First off, I’d like to see a 25 -35 year chart of snow depths at places like Stowe & Mt. Snow, VT. I did plenty of skiing at those places and others in New England myself over the last 4 decades and while there were a few years with not a heck of a lot of snow, there were many more with incredible amounts and of course even more with about ‘average’ snowfalls. Absent a visual record I’d still call Mr. Newell a liar as he chooses to recall his disappointment in those snow-sparse years rather than the ‘thrill of victory’ during the years of over abundant snowfall.
Also, why are Olympians chiming in on something they know absolutely nothing about except for the fact that they need cold & snow to perform? I’d like to know how many of these winter weather experts even took an Earth Science class in high school or paid attention if they did. Maybe they were too busy thinking about their training. I wonder how many of them know their geography and think that just because they’re in Russia it’s supposed to be cold?
Finally, given some of the recent choices of the IOC, I wonder if there is (or what it is) a deeper agenda as these people can’t possibly be so stupid as to think that Sochi is a winter resort ideally located to host a Winter Olympic Games.

The Wiki entry says
“The Rosa Khutor Alpine Resort (Russian: Ро́за Ху́тор, tr. Roza Khutor) is an alpine ski resort in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, located at the Aibiga Ridge of the Western Caucasus along the Roza Khutor plateau near Krasnaya Polyana. Constructed from 2003 to 2011, it is hosting the alpine skiing events for the 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, based in nearby Sochi. The resort is 50 kilometers (31 mi) from the Black Sea at Sochi; the majority of the slopes at Rosa Khutor face northeast, with the backside slopes facing southwest.

However, more relevant is:
“The highest lift is the Caucasus Express gondola, which climbs to the summit of Roza Peak at 2,320 meters (7,610 ft). The main base area for skiing is at Roza Plateau at 1,170 meters (3,840 ft), a vertical drop of 1,150 meters (3,770 ft) from the summit.

Why oh why complain about a lack of snow? We have been informed that there is no need to worry because the MELTING ARCTIC CAUSES MORE SNOW to fall in the northern hemisphere. Having your cake and eat it? As has been pointed out above the winter trend for winter snow in the northern hemisphere is UP since 1967. What is wrong with these people?

The 1928 Winter Olympic games in St Moritz, Switzerland were warmer. Though there was a blizzard during the opening ceremonies, it warmed up rapidly from there. Temperatures hit 77F, melting the ice and causing the cancellation of the 10K speed skating race.

This was 85 years earlier, 3 degrees latitude farther north and 3,000 feet higher than the Sochi ski venue at Rosa Khutor. St Moritz also sits a couple hundred miles inland, whereas Rosa Khutor is only about 25 miles from the coast of the Black Sea. Oh, and it was about 100 ppm lower atmospheric CO2 in St Moritz, as well… well below McWeepy’s proposed target.

For the last 30 years, I’ve lived in the area of the dark blue patch, just NW of the town of Newfane (Snow Analysis Map). This area has the highest snow load roof rating in the state of Vermont. It is a microclimate caused by the loft of the Green Mountain spine just to the West. Besides the nor’easters we also get a fair amount of Lake Effect snow from as far away as Buffalo. Over the years there has been a definite cycle in the amount and intensity of the winter storms. In the last few years they seem to be picking up again, but starting later in the season and going longer into the spring.
Doesn’t appear that Mr. Newell has been paying much attention to that cycle…

If you listen to the announcers during the skiing/snowboarding events they keep referring to the warm temperatures causing poor conditions on the courses and a lot of slushy snow everywhere but not alluding to why and just letting your mind decide for itself why (even the athletes are careful to not criticize the poor surface conditions). If it weren’t for this post I wouldn’t have realized that they decided to host the winter Olympics at a subtropical resort not climatically suitable for snow. One would think that more thought would go into where the winter Olympics is allowed to be hosted in order to provide a high probability of good snow conditions, but I guess that politics and kickbacks are more important.

I am working in Sochi Olympic Games. Just a week before the games there were big snowfalls and more than 50cm of snow accumulated in several venues. In December temperature reached -13°C. Cold waves are fairly common, but not the norm. Doing the Olympics here was a risky choice in terms of climate. Too dependent on a lucky cold wave at the right time. The normal conditions of snow is melting, not accumulating, any time of the year, it only accumulates in short periods. Last year several competitions during the alpine skiing test event had to be cancelled due to lack of snow.

1. The only events actually being held in Sochi itself are indoors: the ice hockey, figure skating, curling, track skating. All the ski-ing, both Alpine and Nordic, are held up in the mountains to the north. Ditto the bobsleigh, sliding disciplines and the ski jumping.
2. The mountains to the north of Sochi have 250cm+ at the top of the mountain and 70cm odd at the bottom. The pictures on the TV confirm this. So where the athletes need snow, there is oodles of it.
3. There is nothing unique about Sochi and its mountains. The Alpes Maritimes in France are as close to the Mediterranean as Krasnaya Polyana (the ski station for Sochi) is to the Black Sea. Piancavalo in Italy is identical.

Now a personal history: in 1990, I worked a winter in the Swiss Alps in what was one of the worst seasons on record until mid February: worse than 1964, which was saying something. At the end of my season, my CEO asked me what I thought about ‘global warming’. I said: ‘Think it’s getting warmer, but it’s one hell of a lot more complicated than people are making out’. I stick by that 24 years later….

That year: rain in the middle of December up to 3500m, washing away the entire snow base across the Alps; a high pressure lasting for 8 weeks through the festive period, January and early February destroying the tourist trade stone dead; +23C at 1600m on February 10th 1990, which might be regarded by some as ‘quite warm for February’.

Oh, and then we had two hurricanes bringing snow, rain and snow (1st one), with significant damage through landslides; and snow, snow and snow (2nd one) along with 250kph winds at 3500m, with lots of trees down. The first storm brought 4 metres of snow to large swathes of the French-, southern Swiss- and Italian Alps and, but for a bit of rain at the end to compact the snow, several ski stations would have been wiped off the map by deadly avalanches.

Then we had a normal March with a bit of snow and plenty of warmish sunshine. Finally, we had the snowiest April for years, with snow down to 1000m 15 days out of 25 (before I went home to UK).

The year before that was almost worse – the high pressure lasted 12 weeks, not 8 and in Scotland where I lived, the mountains had no snow until mid March (this year, there is 4 metres of snow near the tops of many of the Scottish mountains where drifting has built up the snowpack to record levels).

So all, in all, the only place on earth right now with seriously substandard snowpack is California, which until the 5ft dump last week was looking at a disastrous drought (it’s just a pretty bad one now).

Pick humid subtropical climate location for hosting the Winter Olympics, and then get 4% of the athletes to sign a petition to do something about climate change. This sounds like a routine from a British comedy skit.

If it weren’t for this post I wouldn’t have realized that they decided to host the winter Olympics at a subtropical resort not climatically suitable for snow. One would think that more thought would go into where the winter Olympics is allowed to be hosted in order to provide a high probability of good snow conditions, but I guess that politics and kickbacks are more important.

Friedman (and others) said, “If you put the government in charge of the Sahara, the next year there’d be a shortage of sand.”

Minus seventy is a bit too cold for the figure skaters. They’d have to wear so many layers they’d look like giant pom-poms on skates. Not too graceful. On the other hand, it would hurt less when they fell down.

“I truly hate you snowmobilers. A menace to the eardrums, and the peace and quiet of nature.”

Oh, go hug a tree. I’d rather spend my money in Maine or New Hampshire anyway. The riding, snow, views, fees and laws are much better and more inviting there. You can keep your environmental utopia in Vermont.

1. The only events actually being held in Sochi itself are indoors: the ice hockey, figure skating, curling, track skating. All the ski-ing, both Alpine and Nordic, are held up in the mountains to the north.

Actually, the ski venue is in the mountains to the east. Basic facts, spin, etc..

The event could be the worst ice storm for parts of the South in more than 10 years.

Ten whole years?? WOW!

Chuckle.

Reminds me of something I heard on the national news a couple weeks ago, CBS, I think. The weather dude was saying that one place in the south was getting more snow than they’d seen in “1000 days”. He had to use days to make it sound longer and scarier than it really was. I guess 3 years wasn’t scary enough.

@ Gail Combs
But we got a climate hub! Horay!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
OH GOODIE!
That means I can ask where I can trade in my hair sheep (Blackbelly Barbado) for Icelandic Wool sheep and my boer goats for cashmire (fiber) goats!

(Blackbelly Barbado sheep and boer goats are African breeds imported to the USA.)

What a shock! Winter sports enthusiasts want longer seasons! So they want to make the climate COLDER. Which nature may provide. But Man has not done a very good job of warming, so how do they think they will be able to cool it?

Jared says:
February 12, 2014 at 5:56 am
Meanwhile I got on the NASA GISS site the other day to see if they had updated their local station data for January 2014. I first downloaded their data in February 2009. Well the local station data for January 2014 is not up yet but what I found was much more disturbing. I only downloaded data for the Toledo Express Airport in 2009 and now that data is completely different in 2014. Sometime in the past 5 years they have completely fudged the numbers. Early 1880′s data was downgraded by .5 degrees, Early 1900′s data was downgraded by .2 degrees. By 1980 the data was raised by .4 degrees. So the disparity from 1880 to 1980 since 2009 had grown by .9 degrees at the Toledo Airport. WOW, Amazing. And here I thought Data was set in stone. Not at NASA where they artificially just created a .9 degree rise in temperature for the years 1880 to 1980 at the Toledo Airport. Not the slope was negative for those years in 2009. Now in 2014 the slope is level. Amazing stuff.

Yours was the most disturbing comment in this post, Jared.

Anthony, this seems to be a consistent pattern, and yet people generally accept the revisions. I think a Congressman should encourage the relevant committee to call in the people who revised the above data and get a solid explanation as to if, when, and why it occurred. Find out if this is a top-down process where someone on top is ordering revisions be made (always, it seems, in the same direction…down for older temps and up for more recent ones) or if someone in the trenches has “gotten the message” and is churning out revisions that he’s sure will please the powers that be.

And if there’s a completely innocuous, totally rational, reason for the revisions, that would be nice to learn also, although I have my doubts that is what an investigation would find. I also think that starting with this one example would be a good way to go, branching out if results of the initial investigation warranted doing so.

Or, maybe it’s as simple as going to the source and asking. You would probably know the answer to that.

It is obviously a plot by the warmists (including Putin apparently) to host the winter games in a place where it is almost certain to be beset with warm weather, rain and melting ice – then to blame it on global warming.

I’ve gotta hand it to them, apart from the ludicrous price tag, it’s working beautifully.

I borrowed this from Mt Washington, NH (there wasn’t a direct link to this post, so I copied and pasted it)
“Michael Kyle – Weather Observer
18:17 Sat Feb 8th

While snow is in the forecast here in the White Mountains, this time I am not referring to the White Mountain region. Instead I’m referring to the Caucasus mountain range just outside of Sochi, Russia; where the 2014 Winter Olympic Games are being hosted. Contrary to a lot of the media hype there is snow at the Olympic winter games.

While the Olympic host city of Sochi may be free of snow due its close proximity to the Black Sea; the Krasnaya Polyana region, which is where the mountain cluster of the winter games is being held, has plenty of snow. Krasnaya Polyana is located roughly 40 miles northeast of Sochi in the Caucasus mountain range. This is where the outdoor events such as skiing/snowboarding, luge, bobsledding, and many more outdoor events are being held. The weather of the Krasnaya Polyana region is significantly different than the weather in Sochi. Due to the increase in elevation (ranging from 1,857ft to 7300ft) the average temperatures are much lower than the temperatures seen in Sochi. According to Roshydromet, the Russian agency responsible for monitoring and forecasting the weather for the Sochi winter games, February’s monthly mean temperature for Krasnaya Polyana is 35 degrees F. The higher elevations of Krasnaya Polyana see monthly mean temperatures of 16 degrees F. This makes for a much more conducive environment for outdoor winter events, than in the coastal town of Sochi.

To provide a more local prospective on this situation we can compare the temperatures of Portsmouth, NH to the temperatures here at Mount Washington. The climate of Portsmouth is colder then Sochi. The distance is between Mount Washington and Portsmouth is greater than the distance between Sochi and Krasnaya Polyana. However, the change in temperature do to elevation is very similar between the two different coastal and mountain regions. For example the monthly mean temperature for the month of February in Portsmouth is 27 degrees F, while the the monthly mean temperature for the month of February at Mount Washington is 6 degrees F. The difference in elevation between the two locations provides each location with dramatically different weather. The point I’m trying to make is that the weather can change a lot with elevation. So don’t look up Sochi’s forecast and think that it’s the same for Krasnaya Polyana. Just like you wouldn’t look up Portsmouth weather and think it’s the same up on Mount Washington.

“It seems the winter snow extent trend is on the rise in Northern hemisphere, from Rutgers snow lab:”

Well as far as I can tell using the tools that us rude mechanicals use. It’s more of a mean shift that
occured in 2007 (seven points consecutively above the grand mean indicate this if you look at the relevant ANSI standard) which has added an extra 1.5 Mkm2 to the winter snow area. :

Tell me again how the hemisphere is warming and winter sports in danger when 1.5 Mkm2more of it spends 3 months covered in snow……:-)

“Oh, go hug a tree. I’d rather spend my money in Maine or New Hampshire anyway. The riding, snow, views, fees and laws are much better and more inviting there. You can keep your environmental utopia in Vermont.”

I really fail to see how detesting the selfishness of creating an ear splitting racket in otherwise serene, soul nourishing settings so you can get your juvenile rocks off, has to do with hugging trees. But then again, thanks for ably demonstrating the ignorant and stupid mindset of people who seem to have contempt for the natural settings they so thoughtlessly despoil.

Gibby says:
“One would think that more thought would go into where the winter Olympics is allowed to be hosted in order to provide a high probability of good snow conditions, but I guess that politics and kickbacks are more important.”

The same reason why the toilets don’t work and the water looks like weak coffee. Crony capitalism. Only in Russia! Oh, I forgot, Solyndra et al, never mind.

Meanwhile I got on the NASA GISS site the other day to see if they had updated their local station data for January 2014. I first downloaded their data in February 2009. Well the local station data for January 2014 is not up yet but what I found was much more disturbing. I only downloaded data for the Toledo Express Airport in 2009 and now that data is completely different in 2014. Sometime in the past 5 years they have completely fudged the numbers. Early 1880′s data was downgraded by .5 degrees, Early 1900′s data was downgraded by .2 degrees. By 1980 the data was raised by .4 degrees. So the disparity from 1880 to 1980 since 2009 had grown by .9 degrees at the Toledo Airport. WOW, Amazing. And here I thought Data was set in stone. Not at NASA where they artificially just created a .9 degree rise in temperature for the years 1880 to 1980 at the Toledo Airport. Not the slope was negative for those years in 2009. Now in 2014 the slope is level. Amazing stuff.

This continual and undocumented changing of previous years raw data needs more attention. If an accountant tried this he would expect criminal charges. Is anyone keeping records of previous ‘raw data’? The continual use of ‘anomalies’ rather than actual data can hide this subterfuge.

“…once-consistent winters that I saw as a young kid are no more, especially near my home in Vermont.”

Really? Where exactly did he grow up that had consistent winters? As far as I know, winter is always veriable. Just looking at that Rutgers snow extent, and you can see that winters in NA have never been consistent. I think that a psychologist could discuss the human brain’s desire to remember the past as better than it actualy was. I have heard several psychologists discussing this phenomenon.

It made me very angry when Canadian skiers Thomas Grandi and Sara Renner preached at me from the 350.org pulpit. Like the skiers in this post, here were two people who burned more fossil fuels than I ever will by hopscotching around the globe to compete in skiing. They achieved their livelihoods and notoriety by burning massive amounts of fossil fuels and then had enough total disregard of their own hypocrisy to lecture me about carbon dioxide!

Why is it that every one of these irrational mouthpieces is a hypocrite? I’m honestly sick to death of listening to the chastising scolding from the mouths of fools who can’t even find the courage to lead by example. Similarly, these guilt ridden intellects lack the courage to fully examine or challenge their own beliefs.

But, since McKibben has learned how to control weather, I have a request to make …. I would like winter temperatures here in Calgary, AB not to go bellow -10C, and not above +27C in summer. Also, if he could schedule storms only on weekdays, that would be awesome.

Meanwhile, here is Chicagoland:
Two rounds of weekend snow lifted this season’s snow totals above 5 feet, and the city is inching closer to a new record with another cold start to the week.
Snow accumulations from Saturday afternoon and overnight Sunday brought the city’s season total to 62.1 inches. The snowiest winter season on record was the 1978-1979 season, which totaled 89.7 inches of snow.
…
So far, the Chicago area has seen 19 days of sub-zero temperatures and, with two more brutally cold days ahead, the area will be just a few days away from breaking the 25-day record set in the 1884-1885 winter season.

Pokerguy, stick to playing cards and hugging trees. You’re generalizing all snowmobilers as juvenile, ignorant, perverse, stupid and contemptuous – like we don’t have any reasons to appreciate our surroundings. What a childish thing to insinuate. FYI, a portion of our fees go to help preserve nature and educate the public. A lot of good it did for you. Regardless, you’re welcome.

McKibben simply applies Critical Theory; including the choice of a grievance group, in this case olympic athletes. If that’s all that will suffer from Global Warming I won’t care. Maybe he could pick an even more ridiculous group, say, fur coat fashion designers on the Côte d’Azur.

Well so how many Olympic Gold medals does this Andy Newell have so far ?

Perhaps if he concentrated on his skiing, he wouldn’t have to complain about climate to explain his lack of results.

USA snow boarders did a lot of whining about the half pipe (condition). And NBC’s Bob Costas, himself a constant complainer, built the US men up to supermen, before the event. NBC blamed a “bump” on the bottom of the pipe, where basically nothing happens, for both top US giants bombing out, when push came to shove.

Funny thing is that their Russian/Swiss competitor had the same bump in the pipe, and it didn’t affect him one iota; so he won the Gold.

To be fair, the top US boarder, former double Olympic Gold champ, did put on a heck of a run in the prelims to get the highest score of the event, but then he bombed twice in the finals.

In other events, US athletes did pretty well. One young lady got the first ever Luge Olympic medal, without a lot of hype, and a PDG performance.
Julia Mancuso, I had always thought of as a so-so skier; a good competitor, but not an upper echelon one. Well who is, with Lindsey Vonn, and Maria Reisch (Hoefl) to contend with.

But absent Vonn in the field, Mancuso did a bang up downhill in the super combined alpine event, which enabled her not so strong slalom, to get her a bronze medal. Well I think any Olympic medal is a medal. Absent Vonn, I was rooting for Maria Reisch anyway, and she came through for the gold. Well she is currently the best there is, all around; but the absence of Vonn was a big downer for me.

So good job Julia. You did it when it counted, and without blaming the climate.

I’m about done with the Olympics. They need to get more than five countries competing to make an event of it.

I heard that the US half piper who bombed out, is still worth $15M. Maybe his sponsors, are now less than thrilled with their advertising dollars prospects. It’s now all just a business anyway; no longer about individual excellence.

I will give the US snow boarder one thing. He most enthusiastically embraced and congratulated his Russian/Swiss rival after he won the gold; they obviously enjoy their rivalry, just like Lindsey Vonn and Maria Reisch. How lucky she is to live in Garmisch.

The Caucasus look stunning, and the ski Jumpers, looked like they ran on an artificial surface anyway, so who needs snow ?

Average high in February here where I live should be around 37°. Now, it’s only the 12th, but it’s been above freezing once, & then only by maybe 2°. I’d guess our average high so far this February has been 25°. We’re going to need a pretty good run of 40° to get back up to average, I’m guessing.

They have a Mountain Cluster at Krasnaya Polyana, base elevation 560 m (1,840 ft) along the Mzymta River, 39 kilometres (24 mi) from its influx into the Black Sea in Adlersky City District of Sochi, the lift-served summit climbs to 2,320 metres (7,610 ft), giving a vertical drop of over a mile at 1,760 metres (5,770 ft). It is at a distance of 67 kilometres (42 mi) from the center of Sochi by road.

Therefore it is not exactly at the seashore. What are average February climatic conditions in the mountains?

All these kids learn about “global warming” in school. The kid who helped me clear the snow off my driveway after the Nth snowstorm this winter was talking about how the increasing heat makes it cold. They are just going with the received wisdom bestowed on them by our “education” system.

@pokerguy. When I lived in Sudbury, Ontario I would hike through the conservation area (several thousand acres) with my dog in the winter. I would bump into people who would give me sh&t for not having him on a leash. I would encounter cross-country skiers who would yell at me not to walk on their groomed trails. And of course there were the snowmobilers who were chased away by my dog as they crossed the ski trails. I was always thankful my dog preferred to crap on flat fluffy ground.

Add the California drought to the politicization list. This morning’s Department of Water Resources California Water News carries an item “Peter Gleick on the California drought”. Link here:http://mavensnotebook.com/2014/02/12/peter-gleick-on-the-california-drought/
[begin short excerpt and note Gleick’s reversal of weather and climate]
Peter: That’s a great question and it’s a difficult question. We have droughts and floods normally, we have a variable climate. Obviously California’s had droughts periodically and we have wet years and dry years, like everywhere.

We also know, however, humans are now changing the climate. We know that climate change is real. The scientific community is very strong consensus about that, and one way to phrase it is that we’re now as sure that humans are changing the climate as we are that smoking tobacco causes cancer – it’s that degree of certainty.

Of course it helps when you select two lousy locations for the winter Olympics in succession.

No palm trees in Vancouver, B.C. (Canada) but it was a dubious site to hold outdoor events, as some of the skiing events were held essentially in North Vancouver. The weather in Whistler was a more reasonable explanation, but even that weather wasn’t outside the norm. But holding outdoor events in Vancouver, where it seemed local organizers “hoped” for winter to be cold, was pretty silly really. So of course that feeds into the climate change hype.

Go somewhere that actually is a winter city. No palm trees, no rain as the predominant winter form of precipitation and things will likely be just fine. But tweeting about “just fine” or normal just isn’t that much fun.

Steve from rockwood
Yes please don’t you or your dog walk or crap on the groomed ski trails. They now make nice 4 stroke snowmobile and jet ski engines that are much quieter and pollute less. We used to refer to the jet skis as floating chainsaws.

Rod Everson,
I really wish the Wayback Machine would have archived those NASA GISS pages from 2009. It would prove how dishonest they are about the data. I went to http://archive.org/web/web.php and put in the Toledo station webpage so now the 2014 data can be brought up in 2019 to compare. See if they try to add another .9 increase to the already .9 increase they have added since 2009. Who knows what the data looked like in 2000. Another odd ball is that now in 2014 they do not have data for 1986. Yet back in 2009 they had the data for 1986. What happened?

Ian W,
Those station data numbers are not even ‘anomalies’ they are the monthly average.

David S,
The BEST data for Toledo Express is the same data I had downloaded back in 2009, except BEST data goes back 10 years further to 1871 than the NASA GISS data.

But what I don’t get for the BEST data is why do they need to adjust all that raw data? Down for the past and up for the current? At least BEST shows the raw and adjusted data so we can see how much they adjusted them. NASA GISS just adjusts them and plays them off as raw.

“Warmup in Sochi Could Cause Problems for Outdoor Events
By Courtney Spamer, Meteorologist
February 12, 2014; 6:04 AM
Temperatures will continue to reach above average for the first full week of competition with some minor effects to the outdoor events.
…
The warmer air, even for the indoor rinks, will make it more challenging to keep the ice in good shape. Either way, the rise in temperatures could cause some delay for events.
A storm system will approach the region over the weekend leading to rain in Sochi. Meanwhile, rain will fall in the mountains before changing to snow and blanketing the region with several inches.
Cooler and more seasonable weather is expected to follow this storm for the final week of the Sochi Games.
Meteorologist Eric Leister contributed to this story”

Sochi as a location has more to do with showcasing a pleasant part of Russia and providing air access and accommodation to visitors and participants, i.e. the location is political to boost Putin’s status. Rosa Khutor has plenty of snow.

Update: I think my poor sheep and goats want me to knit them sweaters or better yet down coats. We have had over 4 inches of snow fall since noon. (So much for Jeff Masters ability to forecast. less than one inch my &^%@#.)

Jared,
Temps displayed at the GISS website are not “raw”, neither current nor past, the data is “homogenized”, and bears little relationship to reality.
Much of the “data” from the past changes on a monthly basis by various amounts. At the end of 2010 there was a much bigger adjustment to many, but not all, stations that I monitor.
I started saving past data from a few stations a few times a year starting 2007. Mid 2012 my computer died, so I’ve lost some files, but still have Nuuk, Vostok, Amund-Scott, Davis, Halley, Hilo, Nome, Norfolk Island, Yakutat and a few others. To see what the GISS is doing to data, there is a more comprehensive analysis of what has been happening there. A few other private people are doing some monitoring of GISS web data to some extent. Such ashttp://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/data-tampering-at-ushcngiss/

I agree that the corruption of past temperature records is the primary scandal underlying the so-called “Global Warming” issue. Some people are selectively looking for the real, recorded historical station temps from various government agencies, with various levels of success.
In short, very few long term surface weather stations have been maintained with any level of scientific integrity over multi-decadal times. A few european stations may be ok. The raw data from the Amundsen-Scott south pole weather station is archived at the Univ. of Wisconsin. That data goes back to 1957. Plots of south pole temps from that data is a flat line, no change for 55 years.

“That’s exactly the problem that derailed the last Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010… but organizers admitted afterwards that they’d seriously underestimated the impact of climate change.”

What writer Duncan Geere would rather you didn’t know is that the main Olympic skiing venue was actually at Whistler Mountain, a 1.5 hour drive north, where the snow was fine. “Up at Whistler an unprecedented 9.88 metres (32.4 feet) of snow is on the ground, to the delight of Olympics organizers.”http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2010/2010-02-09-02.html

Geere’s hay bale mountain, Cypress, minutes from Downtown Vancouver; and a moderating ocean, hosted a small subset. Historically there have been bad seasons from time-to-time. But recent ski-season snowfall stats simply don’t back up the climate alarmist’s wishful thinking . If this is climate change, give me more please.

Why are warmers so insistent that some point in time climate is the “correct” one to maintain? Where does one get an ego that large to believe that you actually CAN know what the correct climate?

(There is a great overlap, of course, between warmers and the Malthusians who can tell us, within a couple of hundred million, what our population SHOULD be).

Years ago there was a lawsuit where an atheist sued a preacher who had prayed for rain, but the same storm caused a lightning strike which caused a fire. The preacher won because he could prove he only prayed for rain, not lightning.

Warmers better get the same kind of judge, because WHAT IF all their cooling efforts cause TOO MUCH winter?

BTW, in Canada our version of NASA GISS is also playing silly buggers with data. I know that because I accidentally left an Excel data import link “live” for a years-old data pull. I guess they don’t think people will catch them.

That’s exactly the problem that derailed the last Winter Olympics in Vancouver in 2010 — buckets of snow had to be airlifted to top up the slushy covering on the hay bales that were being used to create artificial mounds in the tracks. Those emergency measures proved successful, but organizers admitted afterwards that they’d seriously underestimated the impact of climate change.

It is highly unlikely that the last statement was uttered by those involved in the 2010 winter Olympics organizing. Just the year before it was perfect conditions. Climate change would not manifest itself in just one year, especially if supposed global warming has increased by only 0.8 C from 1880.
I read the local papers here near Vancouver daily and I never read such a statement.

12 Feb: Australian: AP: Winter Olympics become the warm games, as sun melts Sochi snow
Dmitry Chernyshenko, head of the local organising committee, told The Associated Press that it hasn’t been warm enough to warrant tapping into reservoirs of snow stored near the mountain venues. Dismissing hand-wringing over the weather, he said: “It’s not a big surprise for us. We’re a subtropical city.”
Outdoor sports, of course, often find themselves at the mercy of Mother Nature. The last pre-Olympic World Cup weekend for Alpine skiing demonstrated that.
Too much snow scrapped training in St. Moritz, Switzerland, and fog forced cancellation of the last men’s downhill before Sochi — a race already moved from Germany because of a lack of snow. Women’s races shifted from one resort in Slovenia to another because there wasn’t enough snow — only to have rain and fog wipe out a giant slalom at the new spot…
Four years ago, too-warm, too-wet weather in Whistler, British Columbia, delayed the start of racing. At Turin in 2006, the women’s super-G was postponed 24 hours, and the combined event was split over two days. Skiing at the Nagano in 1998 waited for two days, and officials shoehorned nine races into 10 days, even staging more than one on a single day. At Sarajevo in 1984, both downhills were postponed…
A racer who comes from a technical background, such as Miller, gets more help on the ice than the slush, Rearick said.
Asked whether he was surprised about the temperatures so far, Rearick chuckled.
“I’ve spent a lot of time here. This is still mild,” Rearick said. “It gets warmer.”http://www.theaustralian.com.au/sport/sochi-winter-games/winter-olympics-become-the-warm-games-as-sun-melts-sochi-snow/story-fnl6xsc2-1226824726754

22 Jan: Time Mag Sochi Weird Facts: David Stout: Did You Know It Doesn’t Actually Snow in Subtropical Sochi?
Sochi is Russia’s sunshine destination
COMMENT: Hacknaround
This is a silly, closed-minded article. Look back four years to Vancouver
for your answers.
There is snow in the City once every 3 or 4 years for a few days at most.
They pulled off the finest winter olympics to date.Athletes had to travel by
bus to Whistler for the major ski events. For the Vancouver mountain events
like snowboarding, they had to truck snow from 180 kilometers away in
Manning Park….http://keepingscore.blogs.time.com/2014/01/22/sochi-weird-facts/

Well, which is it? On the BBC’s ‘One Show’ 12.2.’14 they had a storm special programme, where their expert warned us that our summers are getting much warmer and the winters are getting much COLDER.
I have to ask the question, is there any regional weather event that happens, that can’t be blamed on climate change? In fact, virtually anything negative that happens, seems to be automatically linked to Climate change. It doesn’t have to be weather related. Let’s not forget that the backbone of this nonsense is the overwhelming effect that Co2 is supposed to have, driving global temperatures in only one direction. … Upwards.

Earlier tonight I made the statement that is would be just as idiotic to have the winter Olympics in Flagstaff Arizona, Ii will admit I was wrong actually it would be more like trying to have them in Sedona.

Actually Flagstaff would be a great place to hold the Olympics:http://www.arizonasnowbowl.com/resort/mountain_info.php
I still don’t understand why Phoenix and Tucson grew so much. Flagstaff is much more livable year round – I don’t like 110 F temps in the summer, Flagstaff doesn’t have that.

Minus seventy is a bit too cold for the figure skaters. They’d have to wear so many layers they’d look like giant pom-poms on skates. Not too graceful. On the other hand, it would hurt less when they fell down.

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Shhhhhhhh! Don’t day that too loud! They’ll make it a new Olympic event. Pom-Pom Skating.